ordinary.
The G-8 finance ministers were meeting in the library, and we were turned away. The working press was herded into another room a few doors down. We looked in there. The room had been set up for press conferences, which were going to be held later this afternoon when the ministers had some agreement to spin for the folks back home.
We wandered along, looking at this, looking at that. The ceilings were way up there, like twenty-five feet above the floor, and everything was gilded in real gold, or painted to look like it. The gold was accented by white pillars and walls, although occasionally a brilliant color had been used for contrast. All in all, it was a hell of a palace, but I wouldn’t have wanted to live there back in the good old days, B.T.P. — before toilet paper. Those were chamber-pot days, long before running water. Makes me shiver just thinking about it. Maybe that’s why camping has never had much appeal to me.
“Maybe you ought to get married,” Willie said, right out of the blue, while we were contemplating a huge painting of a queen with the royal children.
The American philosopher Jerry Lee Lewis once said that too much sex drives a man insane. No joke. Willie had lost it.
“Sarah’s pretty serious, you know,” he added, quite unnecessarily.
“What would you know about marriage? I seem to recall that you are a lifelong bachelor.”
“Thought about gettin’ married. Once. Years ago.”
We strolled on, looking at paintings. I was kinda glad I didn’t have this kind of art in my apartment.
“Was datin’ a redheaded nymphomaniac who owned a liquor store,” Willie said a moment or two later. “She was easy to get serious about.”
“You’re lying.”
“Well, to tell the truth, she wasn’t really a redhead. Dyed her hair and straightened it and made it stand up. Looked pretty good, actually.”
“You never took her to the altar.”
“Never got seriously into liquor, man. Beer’s my drink. But Sarah, she’s a nice woman. Gonna make some guy a wife for life.”
“Let’s talk about something else, like global warming, the tax code, or who’s going to get to the Super Bowl.”
When we got to the Hall of Mirrors, the big hall on the back of the building, we found another crowd. Workmen were setting up a huge conference table, a microphone system, enough lights to stage a rock concert, and a bank of television cameras. This was where the presidents and prime ministers were going to meet to talk about important political stuff. Under the constant scrutiny of a squad of paramilitary police, we walked slowly along looking at everything.
“This is where it’s gonna happen, if it happens,” Willie declared. “While they’re all together. On television, even. This may be the only time they’re all together. Maximum impact.”
I looked at the cops, at the television cameras, at the statues lining the walls, at the mirrors, at the vaulted gilded ceiling way up there. This room obviously inspired several generations of railroad station architects. But if Al Qaeda intended to strike here, how were they going to do it?
If I knew the answer to that one, I’d be running the Secret Service, not wandering around with a daffy ex-con with marriage on his mind.
We strolled on to the other end of the room and past the squad of paras. A couple nodded at us after they inspected our passes, which were hanging on a little chain around our necks.
Behind them, covering the wall, hung a curtain that reached all the way to the floor. I had seen other curtains here and there throughout the building, but now the implications sank in. I felt the curtain and found the part. Easing it back a little, I saw a door. It wore a common European lock.
“Look at that,” I said to Willie.
He wasn’t impressed. “Hell, I could open that with a bobby pin,” he scoffed.
“Got one on you?”
He scrutinized my face. “Are you nuts? They’ll throw our asses outta here.”
“We got passes and we know people. Do you have a pin?”
“Yeah.” Willie removed one from his shirt pocket and straightened it out somewhat. I reflected that old habits die hard.
He slipped behind the curtain while I stood there looking at the backs of the troops. Ten seconds passed, fifteen, then half a minute.
“Got it,” he said in a barely audible voice. “Come on.”
No one was watching me. I went through the curtain and the door, which Willie was holding open. He came in behind me and pulled the door shut until it latched. Then he grinned. “Still got it, dude. Still got it.”
We were in a narrow hallway, perhaps four feet wide, lit by naked bulbs in fixtures on the wall just above head-high. The wire that ran from fixture to fixture was stapled to the wall.
“Slave hallway,” Willie said softly.
“The frogs didn’t have slaves.”
“The hell they didn’t! They were all slaves — that’s why they had a revolution. Lead off. Let’s see where she goes.”
We walked along and came to a ladder leading upward. We were inside the interior wall of the Hall of Mirrors. I consulted my tourist literature, which had a rudimentary map of the chateau’s rooms. We were between the Hall of Mirrors and the king’s bedroom. Sure enough, a few paces farther on, we came to a doorway that must lead to the king’s chamber. I said as much to Willie.
“Want to look in there?” he asked.
“No.” We walked on. The passage was endless. Doors opened into every room. Narrow stairs led up and down. We took one leading down, went down and down, and came to another passageway that led away in two directions. These servants’ passageways apparently led all over the building.
“The kings and queens didn’t want the help parading through the big rooms,” Willie said.
At the bottom of another staircase we found only a door, so we opened it. We were in a kitchen. Seated at a table were Jake Grafton and the French police inspector, Papin.
“Ah, Terry. Willie. You’ve been exploring, I see. Come sit down, have a drink of wine.”
Willie marched right over and parked his bottom. “Howdy,” he said to the Frenchman as Grafton poured him a small glass of white wine. I accepted one, too.
“How did you get into the passageways?” the Frenchman asked in good English.
I jerked a thumb at Willie. He tossed his bobby pin onto the table. I see.
This cop had obviously been around. I turned my attention to Grafton. “You think this Abu Qasim is going to try for paradise tomorrow?”
“Perhaps, but I doubt it,” the admiral said. “However, someone might. Inspector Papin has been briefing me on Muslim fanatics here in France, which seems to have its share plus a few.”
“Suiciders,” Willie said sourly, and slurped more wine. He drank it as if it were beer. The Frenchman didn’t seem offended.
“Inspector Papin was telling me about the renovation of this building that was completed this past spring,” Grafton said. “All the rooms on the main floor were extensively refurbished.”
He looked at me and I looked at him.
“Tomorrow I want you and Willie in those servant hallways,” Grafton said.
“Okay.”
He slid a ray gun across the table. It looked like the one I used at the Rancho Rodet.
“The batteries all charged up?” I murmured.
“Yep.”
I checked that the power was off, then pocketed it. Papin had his head turned and didn’t seem to notice.
“What are you guys going to do about ol’ Henri?” I asked the police inspector.
Papin shrugged. “I am just a policeman,” he said.
“Next week, after the summit, Henri Rodet will be asked to retire for medical reasons,” Grafton said.
